Techno in the Age of Oblivion

This week we’re visiting another of 20JFG’s favourite labels, Holodeck Records. Which is a good time to do so as they’ve got an epic label compilation out, spanning their entire roster of synth driven goodness. There are 30 tracks on this comp but today we are focussing on one.

Where once these mournful, muscular techno tracks bullied their way across our overactive imaginations — recalling all our innocent 80s action-film power fantasies filtered through our equally naive existential angst — we are now more fearful.

They still conjure a sense of ascension and muscular, propulsive forward motion. Like a side scrolling videogame where the only option is forward (or, more precisely, right). This hyper-masculine space. This co-option of Techno into an internal metronome for our beloved rugged individualists, stalking the night and armed to the teeth. This space is now, in turn, stalked by our own encroaching dystopias. For our muscle bound libertarians, railing against any regulation of their own primal agency aren’t to be indulged, they’re to be feared. For the ironically detached fantasy has become a aspirational reality. Where once we our tourists, we’re now prospective residents.

All of this perspective shifting leaves us with a fresh and tactile response to these synth bangers. They still bang with all the power of the neon night. They still plunge us into the power and the highest of stakes. But this is beginning to feel like contemporary experience rather than the ironic detachment that might once has flicked through this minimal night music. What is old will forever be new again.

Dream Last Night is taken from the Holodeck compilation Vision One which you can get right here.